


As Ever it Was

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Multi, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 01:55:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16483868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: David knows it's not for him.





	As Ever it Was

The first time David sees it, he knows it’s not meant for anyone’s eyes, not anymore. Once, certainly, but no more. It’s a secret thing, part of the tragedy that hangs on Frank like a soft, unshakable robe.

At first, he doesn’t know what it is. A tattoo, obviously, but so stylized he can’t suss it out into any comprehensible whole. He looks away, in that bright room where Frank almost died, almost drowned in his own blood on a stranger's bed; he looks away, and tries not to think about it. It’s not for him.

But his eyes slide back, against his will, and it’s often this way, between him and Frank. A sort of look-but-never-touch situation. Honestly, David is scared sometimes that, as overwhelmed as he feels around Frank, to touch him would be to lose his barely present composure. Frank has dealt with enough shit, he doesn’t need David’s unwarranted infatuation with him.

It’s letters, he decides, looking away again, dragging his eyes from the hem of Frank’s boxers, from the dark black lines that just barely peek out from the hiked up fabric. Frank is unconscious and David is exhausted, but he refuses to leave Frank’s side. He’s got a bruise the size of his palm spread over the inside of his left arm, right at the soft inner joint of his elbow, from the hasty transfusion that had saved Frank’s life.

Soon, Frank would wake up. Frank would disappear. David braces himself for this fact; this was never meant to be a relationship with any staying power.

He closes his eyes and tips his head back, and he sees the mark on Frank’s inner thigh emblazoned in the darkness there.

‘VE’ he decides. The tattoo says ‘VE’, for all the good it does to figure that out. He works at it like a puzzle; not Roman numerals, maybe initials? Initials didn’t track much either though; Frank could be a romantic, certainly, but he’d loved Maria so long and so deeply, it was hard to imagine he’d ever have gotten someone else’s name inked on him. Especially not there, such a deeply intimate place.

He’s thinking about that, about all the love Frank still had in him, buried under the pain and the rage and the war, and the answer comes to him, sharp as a knife between the ribs and just as painful.

A couple’s tattoo. Maria, he was willing to bet, sported the matching ‘LO’ on her own thigh.

There’s a certain poetry to that, to the beginning of the word, the start of Frank’s ‘LOVE’ being lost to him forever, buried in the ground. Deceased, decayed, dismissed, leaving just the nonsensical tail forever branded on Frank’s flesh, incomplete, meaningless on its own. It’s poetry, all right, and miserable.

David tries not to think of it anymore, and for the most part, he succeeds. He doesn’t think about it for months, in fact, doesn’t even let it factor into his dreams, the dreams he still has with frustrating frequency as he tries to get on with his life as a living, not hunted man. In his dreams Frank is often bloody, often dying -- sometimes in some godforsaken stretch of Kentucky backwoods, sometimes in the basement they’d lived in together so long; sometimes Frank is dying right in David’s house, in David’s arms, while Sarah screams for David to do something and the kids cry in fear, and David can only dig his fingers into that bloody skin and pray he can hold tight enough to push Frank back together.

In those dreams, a tattoo doesn’t really figure in.

David tells Sarah about it one night, after New Year’s has come and gone and Frank still hasn’t come back to them. They’re finishing off the champagne, and she gently pulls his cell phone out of his hands, sweetly telling him Frank might call back tomorrow. They’re both a little drunk, and it feels… nice, right, to share with his wife about this man they’d both fallen a little in love with.

He tells her about the tattoo, the sad poetry of it, and she reaches out to cup his face, swiping under his eye as if -- and he realizes then that he’s crying, he’s drunk and crying about the sad, broken man he’d tried so hard to keep distant from, the man who had somehow broken open his ribs and nested inside. It’s okay.

Sarah cries too, and there’s no loving that night, not after that much champagne, but there is a text the next morning, waiting for him when he wakes up, wishing for Vietnamese miracle soup and the dull quiet of a cold basement.

Two days later, he meets Frank at a shitty bar. Frank has a black eye and stitches in his forehead, but David grins when he sees him anyway. They talk for hours and then, signalled by nothing David understands, Frank puts one big, rough hand over David’s, and asks if he wants to go somewhere.

David thinks about making a joke. Thinks about asking if this is a date, or pointing out that they already are somewhere. Frank would have laughed, called him a wiseass, and the offer would have been retracted or rerouted. David can see that all well enough, so he closes his mouth and answers in a nod.

The second time David sees it, he pretends not to. It’s not for him, whatever else is being offered here. Frank’s kisses are like whispers, soft and not enough, but his hands are like brands, searing imprints into David’s skin. By the time Frank pushes David into the hard, creaking mattress in the low-lit tenement room, David thinks he’s half out of his mind. Frank kisses him while he takes him apart, fucking him slow and deliberate like he thinks it's the only time he’ll ever be allowed so he has to savor it.

David does everything up to and including getting down on his knees and begging Frank to come home with him afterward, after they’ve both gotten back their breath and Frank has put coffee on for them. Frank will not relent, and David leaves feeling cold despite the promise Frank makes to stay in touch.

He knows better than to think he knows were Frank lives now. Frank doesn’t put down roots; he’ll have packed what little he needs and left that place within a day.

Spring comes late that year, and the rains are severe. It’s literally a dark and stormy night when David answers a knock on the door and has to literally catch Frank so he doesn’t fall face-first into the entryway.

Sarah helps him get Frank upstairs, and they put him in their bed. It’s not how they wanted that particular arrangement to occur, but they say nothing, working in perfect concert to triage this man they care so deeply for.

Frank comes awake while David is carefully sewing closed an awful looking cut on his ribs, Sarah standing by with sterile gauze and medical tape. When he groans and tries to sit up, Sarah gives him a look so sharp, David’s surprised he doesn't resume bleeding. Needless to say, he remains laying flat.

Refusing to go to the hospital makes it easier on the Liebermans. They don’t want him to leave anyway. He agrees, reluctantly, to remain for a little while while he heals.

The third time David sees it, Sarah presses her fingers over the tattoo, dragging them down the leg of the ‘V’. She’s always had more spine than him, and he thrills when, as Frank looks up at her like she’s struck him, she curls close and kisses him.

Loving Frank is easy, it comes natural to both of them, and Frank, far less versed in emotional reciprocation than most, seems to bloom for them as they care for him. His smiles slowly lose their knife edge, his eyes stop tracking after every moving shadow. He relaxes for them. He cooks the kids breakfast.

Frank has half a word tattooed on his skin, broken and daunting, and David worried about the symbolism of that, the implication. The reality of the situation is that Frank is full of love, more than anything else in him. His love is raw and challenging and sometimes painful, but it's love and it’s real. There’s nothing halved about it, it just needs nurturing, and between Sarah and himself, David thinks maybe they can pour enough love back into this man to keep him from snuffing himself out.


End file.
